A Happy Death

Blurb

A Happy Death was the first novel by French writer-philosopher Albert Camus. The existentialist topic of the book is the "will to happiness," the conscious creation of one's happiness, and the need of time to do so. It draws on memories of the author including his job at the maritime commission in Algiers, his suffering from tuberculosis, and his travels in Europe.
Camus composed and reworked the novel between 1936 and 1938 but then decided not to publish it. It was eventually published in 1971, more than 10 years after Camus' death. The English translation by Richard Howard appeared in 1972.
A Happy Death is clearly the precursor to Camus' most famous work, The Stranger, published in 1942. The main character in A Happy Death is named "Patrice Mersault", similar to The Stranger's main character "Meursault"; both are French Algerian clerks who kill a man in cold blood. A Happy Death is written in the third person, while The Stranger is written in the first person.